Kyrie Eleison:  The Long Road To War
by WarlordFil
Summary: A tale of the Clone Wars.  The Iron Clan of Bavaria join the Manhattan Clan in the Clone Wars, where Wagner's daughter feels the terrible pressure of her father's legacy.  In progress.
1. Chapter 1

KYRIE ELEISON

A Fanfic of the Clone Wars

THE LONG ROAD TO WAR

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another blast from the past from the wayback machine…this story is coming up to twenty years old, but it still holds up fairly well. Inspired by "Future Tense," this is from a circle of tales made by some friends and I about our characters in the time of the "Clone Wars."

Bwa ha ha...here we go...loooong list of credits...

The Clone Wars Timeline was created by Amy K. Cyrway and Jennifer DeSalme. Thanks for letting me play in your world... "Nice war, can I play too?"

Arin MacDuff, the Black Sword, Caligo, Eddie, Stiletto, Joshua Lawerence and Elly are the creation of Amy K. Cyrway.

The Outklaws (Mauser, Winchester, Colt, Claymore, Smith, Wesson, Magnum, Demonika) are the joint creation of Amy K. Cyrway and Donika Doyon.

Chimura and Mercedes are property of Jennifer DeSalme.

Clan Winslow-Sam, Pippen and Alexia-belongs to each of the Clan Winslow members respectively.

We'll give this a PG-13 for violence and language...now...LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

THE LONG ROAD TO WAR

"I wanna live! I wanna love! But it's a long hard road, outta hell!"

-Marilyn Manson

**Chapter the First**

19 December 1999

Schloss Adler

Bavaria, Germany

The coral-coloured gargoyle let her hand travel lovingly over the shell of her first-born egg, marvelling at the life stirring beneath her fingertips.

She was more than a hundred years old, an age often beyond childbearing in gargoyles. Her twin eggs had been conceived during her fourth and final cycle. For so many years she had struggled to accept that she would never have a child...

...and now the miracles lay before her, ready to hatch.

Aldrich, the moss-green second-in-command of the Iron Clan of Bavaria, turned his gaze away from the unusually small egg to look at his Chancellor beside him. "Who's the father?"

Chancellor Bismarck glared at him.

"I'm sorry. It's none of my business. You do realize, however, that the clan is going to be wondering."

She nodded, knowing it was true.

But how could she tell them who the father was?

"Tell them that Patriot is the father," she answered.

Aldrich fidgeted. The fact that his Chancellor had a human lover had never sat easily with him, regardless of the fact that the scrappy blond human was as much a Renegade hero as Bismarck herself. "Patriot's human. That egg is full gargoyle."

"Patriot is the father," she said flatly.

He sighed. "I hope the clan will take adoption as an answer..."

Departing, he wondered who the real father was.

Bismarck may have been a hero, but she certainly wasn't much to look at. Her facial features were not humanoid like most of the Iron Clan. She had a long rectangular muzzle, like a cow's, with hooked nostrils and velvety lips. Folded bovine ears hung from the sides of her face, and her cinnamon hair was a mane down the back of her neck. The Illuminati had considered killing her at birth, as they killed most 'degenerate' gargoyles-the web-wings, the animal-featured, the half-breeds. Rumour had it that her family connections had saved her life; she was supposedly the daughter of a high-ranking Illuminatus gargoyle named Bach, though she bore little physical resemblance to him. However, Bismarck had no fur or feathers, and her physical structure, while short and somewhat dumpy, was normal enough.

Briefly, he wondered if Bismarck's twin eggs were the product of rape, by one of the Illuminati gargoyles, before Bismarck and the Renegades had overthrown Mephistopheles von Sturm and the Bavarian Illuminati. Perhaps that was why she was so close-mouthed about it.

Surely, though, the Illuminati would have known better than to attack her during her cycle. Those degenerates not killed at birth were forbidden to reproduce...

He shook his head. None of his business, indeed.

31 December 1999

Schloss Adler

The two Bavarian gargoyles looked at the human with disapproval, barring the entrance to the rookery. The man was dressed in ceremonial green birthing robes, but they could not camouflage his Caucasian-peach skin, his booted feet, or the fingernails on his left hand. His right hand clutched the robe closed, hidden in the folds of fabric.

"I was invited," the stranger said softly.

The two gargoyles looked at one another uneasily.

"By Chancellor Bismarck," he pressed.

One of the guards cleared his throat. "You must have been mistaken."

"Humans are not allowed in the rookery during the hatching ceremony," the other gargoyle said.

A bronze flash lit up the interior of the hood.

Then the rookery doors swung open from within. A moss-green male with musk-oxen horns stood in the open doorway. "Greetings, Patriot," said Aldrich, despite the reserved expression on his own face.

"Thank you," the blond human replied, nodding curtly to the guards, and entering.

"But..." one of the guards protested.

Bismarck, standing at Aldrich's side, gave the guard a look that silenced her immediately.

"Do you have any weapons?" the male guard called after Patriot. Weapons of any sort were forbidden in the rookery.

The man paused, then handed the guard a Walther PPK handgun before proceeding alongside Bismarck and Aldrich.

It was birthing season. The rookery was on twenty-four hour watch. Midwives tended the eggs in rotating shifts. Attendants passed up and down between the rows of wooden cradles stuffed with straw, each one bearing an egg. While there were always at least two designated witnesses present, the gallery was more often crammed with eager relatives and friends. Tonight, the place was oddly deserted due to the turning of the millennium. Aldrich and his mate were the only ones who would agree to be witnesses. Despite the expected birth of the

Chancellor's children, the rookery was on skeleton staff-two assistants and a rookery mother.

The human flanked Bismarck down the row of cradles to 4D and 4E, the ones that held Bismarck's eggs. "How are you doing?" he whispered to the pink gargoyle.

She looked at the mottled eggs, her eyes wide. "I never thought I'd be here," she murmured.

"You were rookery mother for Rommel's generation," he teased, knowing what she meant.

She poked him in the ribs. "I mean here. Not as a midwife but as a..."

"Mother," he whispered. He took her arm in his and looked over at the eggs. "They're something, aren't they?"

"You were never present for a hatching either, were you?"

His eyes darkened. "That wasn't my choice."

"I know," she murmured, half sorry that she'd mentioned it. She rested her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Aldrich clamped down on his teeth, struggling to silence the voice inside him.

The egg in 4D rustled.

An attendant hailed the rookery mother, who came down the aisle at a quick trot. The egg rocked back and forth, trembling. The Gargoyle Chancellor and her human companion caught their breaths in anticipation.

A peach-coloured hand smashed through the top of the egg. The eyes of the witnesses were glued to the scene of the rupture, watching new life breaking free. A tail flickered through the gap. The arm returned, then another arm, flailing madly.

Suddenly, a squeal. A red line appeared across the hatchling's wrist. Blood graced the razor-sharp point of the eggshell.

Swiftly, the rookery mother stepped in, ensuring the hatchling did not injure itself further. She broke back the rim of the eggshell and lifted the hatchling free, carrying it to a nearby table. An assistant brought over gauze to bind the wound.

Outside, the millennium turned. Bismarck and Patriot did not even notice.

Bismarck and her companion were about to approach the table when the smaller egg, 4E, thrashed suddenly and cracked clean around the center. It wobbled frantically...

...and a little coral-coloured head thrust itself out of the hole, gasping for air.

The witnesses murmured.

Bismarck's old training took over as she picked up the hatchling and cradled it in her arms. Decades ago, when the Bavarian Illuminati had ruled the Iron Clan, Mephistopheles von Sturm had decreed that a degenerate creature like the muzzled, animal-featured Bismarck was

suitable only for menial jobs and rookery duty. She had held generations of hatchlings...

But this one was different.

He was her own.

He had skin a shade lighter than her own, more of a peachy-colour than her own pink skin. His features were humanlike, but he had Bismarck's double-pointed eye ridges toppedwith her rounded giraffelike horns, her split wings. Those wings, however, were black, topped with his father's five fingered wing hands; he also had a hard spade on the tip of his

tail. His hair was cinnamon as Bismarck's had been before age had shot it through with grey.

She heard her companion asking the rookery mother if the child would be all right.

"She'll be fine," the rookery mother assured him.

Aldrich leaned over Bismarck's shoulder. "Handsome little fellow, isn't he?"

Freyja, Aldrich's mate, left the table where the rookery mother tended the firstborn hatchling and sidled up to the moss-green male. "A little female," she murmured in a voice Bismarck was not intended to hear. "She has that muzzle...such a shame..."

Bismarck ignored the remark. Years of the Illuminati's "racial purity" teachings would take years to undo. As long as the Iron Clan obeyed her, she didn't give a damn if they thought she was the ugliest thing on earth...

A pang shot through her heart. In the depths of her soul, she did care.

Patriot had also overheard. His eyes flashed warningly but he made no move, simply squeezing Bismarck's hand in his.

She smiled then, remembering that her mate did not think she was ugly at all.

Aldrich got his first clear look at the little peach hatchling. She may have had Bismarck's face, with that unfortunate lamblike muzzle, folded bovine ears, and a fleshy black spade at the tip of her tail, but the rest of her evidently came from somewhere else. The hair was golden blond; the wings hanging behind her back were black and batlike, tipped with five-fingered wing hands. A crest rose up from between her eyes, running down the back of her head to the crown, where a V-shape rose like the tail of a stealth fighter. The prongs of the V were rounded giraffelike horns like those on her mother's forehead...

...but the crest...

...peach, crested gargoyle, with black wings...

Why did that association make Aldrich's blood run cold?

Then the cozy little scene fell apart in a matter of seconds. If Aldrich's blood had been cold before, it was now frozen to pure ice.

The assistant at the table suddenly snatched up the female hatchling. She raised her right hand, which held a Luger handgun. The barrel nuzzled the child's tender head.

The doors of the rookery swung wide. The guards marched in, each carrying an assault rifle, and slamming the doors behind them. The rifles swept over Bismarck and her entourage.

The second assistant, terrified, ducked down under a cradle at the far end of the rookery and lay still, praying they would not notice her.

The rookery mother pressed in a frightened huddle with Aldrich, Freyja, Bismarck, and Patriot. Aldrich reached for his Luger and Bismarck fumbled for a stiletto before they suddenly realized that their weapons were not there; weapons were not permitted in the rookery. Unless, of course, you were a guard.

Patriot's left hand rose and gripped the little bronze penknife that hung on a chain around his neck.

"What's the meaning of this?" Aldrich hissed with false bravado.

"The reclaiming of Schloss Adler by its rightful owners," the traitor assistant replied. "The Bavarian Illuminati."

"Grendel," Bismarck snarled. The Renegades had overthrown the Illuminati in 1989 in the uprising known as Gotterdammerung-the Twilight of the Gods. Grendel and some of the others had escaped and started their own revolutionary group, the Insurrectionists. Evidently the assistant and the two guards were members.

Bismarck looked at the gun barrel pressed against her daughter's head and clung tightly to her son in her arms. "What do you want?" Bismarck asked, her mouth dry.

The female guard leered. "Grendel wants her castle and her clan back."

Grendel. One of Von Sturm's Old Guard-his former second in command.

"The days of the Illuminati are over," Bismarck said slowly. "You cannot bring them back."

"We can, and we will," said the assistant. "Or your hatchling will die."

Bismarck caught Patriot's eye. He nodded slowly. Wordlessly, she passed her son to Aldrich.

Freyja thrust her hand into her pocket and pressed three times on an encoded transmitter. Trouble in the rookery. Proceed, but with caution.

"Put down your guns and we can bargain," Bismarck offered.

"Why should we do that?" the assistant sneered.

"As a gesture of your good faith," the clan leader replied. "You have both advantages now-your weapons and my hatchling. For all I know you intend to kill us all. Prove otherwise."

The Insurrectionists looked at one another.

"We don't need to bargain now," the assistant said, as if she knew about Freyja's signal to the rest of the guard force. "We have our bargaining chip right here." She jolted the hatchling. "We'll be in touch." Her head swung towards the two guards. "Wotan! Take our little ace in the hole."

The male guard slung his rifle over his back, stepped forward, and took the hatchling from the assistant. He looked down at the baby, stared for a second at Bismarck, and ran his hand over the little gargoyle's crest. "You know who this kid looks like?"

"Shut up, Wotan," the female guard muttered. "Just take the kid and go."

"But ma'am, she looks like that Illuminati hero. The Master Assassin. What with the crest and the black wings..."

"GO!" the female yelled.

All hell broke loose again.

One moment, Patriot was holding his bronze pendant in his left hand as a Catholic might cling to a crucifix. The next, his left hand encircled the barrel of a great bronze assault rifle, his right hand clamped on the trigger.

Patriot fired a steel curtain of bullets that ripped through the middle of the female guard. Bismarck flung her body between Wotan, who still held the hatchling, and the armed female assistant. The female growled, preparing to shoot.

Then Patriot's rifle abruptly became a Walther. It barked once and a hole appeared in the female Insurrectionist's wrist. Her weapon fell to the floor. She whirled around in time to receive a second bullet between the eyes.

The female baby squalled in fear. The male hatchling burrowed into Aldrich's arms, hiding its face.

The Insurrectionist male went down on one knee, dropping the hatchling, scrabbling to get his gun off his back and bring it to bear.

Patriot sprang into the air, black wings flaring from behind his back. As gravity pulled him back to earth, the bronze handgun changed form once again, this time to a bronze engraved sword. Its lower edge was curved like a cutlass and toothed with four wicked, back-curving serrations...

The Assassin's Blade.

Patriot's eyes glowed a deadly bronze and his mouth opened in a fanged scream that sounded like a falcon's cry.

Aldrich and Wotan both realized with a sickening certainty who the hatchling's father was, as the great bronze blade descended.

Wagner pulled the blade free of Wotan's corpse and scooped up the squalling hatchling, checking her over. Aside from a few small bruises and the bandaged arm, she seemed unharmed. He murmured a few words to his daughter and then turned on his heel to Bismarck and Aldrich.

Bismarck's heart chilled as she saw that both Wagner and the hatchling

were splattered in blood.

"It's not ours," Wagner replied, as if reading her mind.

The coral female reached out her arms for her daughter. Wagner, meanwhile, stared defiantly at the moss-green gargoyle who held his son. He rested the bloody tip of the Assassin's Blade on the floor.

"Mein Gott," Aldrich breathed.

Wagner, former Master Assassin of the Bavarian Illuminati, who was also the Renegade hero known as Patriot, stood as if frozen in place.

Bismarck looked up from her newly-hatched daughter and focused her gaze on Aldrich and Freyja. "I trust you'll be able to keep quiet about this." The two nodded jerkily.

Wagner approached them. They looked at the humanlike gargoyle as if they had never seen him before. Their condescending arrogance towards "Patriot" had been replaced by fear. Their eyes were wide.

He held out his hands.

Aldrich stared until he realized what the blond gargoyle wanted. He handed over the coral hatchling. Wagner took the baby with a smile and turned away. Bismarck nodded and returned her attention to her daughter. Wagner furled his black wings, resting his five-fingered wing hands on his shoulders, and produced a soft cloth which he used to wipe the Insurrectionist's blood from the little female's skin.

Baptized by blood...

An irrational thought crossed his mind.

What has my daughter inherited from me?

A disturbing thought. He banished the idea, walling it in with the other Things Not To Be Thought About in a barricaded corner of his brain. It was relatively easy to do, for Wagner was not a gargoyle who believed in prophecy.

3 January 1999

Schloss Adler

Curled side by side on the sofa, Bismarck and Wagner watched their children at play on the floor. Both were somewhat stunned by the magnitude of what had happened to them-the years of loneliness, the despair of ever seeing their own hatchlings or watching them grow, the

miracle they had found in one another, the strain of the hatching night's traumatic events.

"What are we going to call them?" Bismarck said at last. "It's awful that we haven't named them yet."

"Since when did we ever follow conventions?" her mate smirked. His face grew serious. "Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to name the male Meckler."

"After your human friend in the war." She smiled. "Meckler it is. And the female?"

The hatchling in question crawled by their feet. Suddenly, she reared up and planted her hands on Bismarck's knee spike, flaring her wings and letting her eyes light up.

"I don't know about this little valkyrie," Bismarck said, scooping up the blond-haired girl who, after only thirty-six hours of life, had firmly established herself as the terror of the rookery.

Wagner tilted his head, amused. "That was Aashlee's original name. Valkyrie."

"I suppose she likes her American name better."

"She still answers to Valli, but I know she prefers the name the New Orleans clan gave her."

"Well, then, is the name up for grabs?" Bismarck looked down at the child in her arms. "I think it suits."

"I should be able to keep them straight."

"We'll make it easy. For short...we'll call her Kyrie."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter the Second**

***INTERLUDE***

The fleeting years brought domestic peace to the war-weary Wagner of

Schloss Adler. On May 5, 2004, Bismarck became Chancellor not only of

the Iron Clan of Bavaria but of the Adler Republic-a small nation-state,

about the size of San Marino, comprised of Schloss Adler, its surrounding

forest, and the handful of outpost castles once controlled by the

Bavarian Illuminati. A thriving town sprang up around Schloss Adler,

populated by gargoyles from all over the world. While open to all, the

Adler Republic was generally known as the first gargoyle nation.

Proud, contented, Wagner occupied himself with raising his new family

and observing Schloss Adler transform itself from former Illuminati

headquarters to the main building of a new democratic government. The

situation was far from idyllic-Grendel's Insurrectionists made sure of

that, planting car bombs and raiding the outpost castles-but the newly

organized Adler Militia, under Aldrich's command, was strong and

effective in controlling the problem. Wagner himself remained

uninvolved. Many still did not know that the dreaded assassin Wagner and

the Renegade hero Patriot were one and the same, and he preferred it that

way. It was easier to live the quiet life of a Renegade veteran. 

Finally, after a century of war, it appeared that his battle was over.

Elsewhere, the battle was only beginning.

July 4, 2008, marked the beginning of the Clone Wars. Mutates and

clones under the control of Anton Sevarius swept down on Long Island and

claimed it for their own. Only a rag-tag band of gargoyles and humans,

led by Goliath of the Manhattan Clan, dared stand against the

onslaught. 

In Bavaria, the Insurrectionists were quiet, having slunk into hiding to

lick their wounds and gather strength for their next assault-strength

that would be years in coming. Meckler and Kyrie were four in human

years, Bismarck was in the middle of her first term in office as

Chancellor of a country, and an old soldier was debating whether it was

worse to return to his bloody ways of the past, or to stand idly by while

the armies of darkness marched... 

***END INTERLUDE*** 

December 2008

Adler Republic 

"I don't want to go to war," Wagner said softly. 

"You keep saying that," Bismarck noted, "and you keep bringing it up.

Repeatedly." 

"Aren't you thinking of sending aid to the gargoyle rebels?" 

"It's feasibility-study-only at the moment. We've got only scattered

information from the disputed area and we're not going to go rushing into

anything. Our hold on the Adler Republic is recent and not without

dispute. Better that we consolidate at home before sending troops

abroad." Her brown eyes pierced into his. "You're going to go, aren't

you." 

It wasn't a question. 

"I don't want to go," he said again. 

She stroked his cheek. "So much of your life has been things you did

not want to do. Now, though, you have the freedom to choose for

yourself. No one here will make you go." 

He sighed bitterly. "Freedom to choose. That's no freedom at all. It

means only that I am captive to my own conscience rather than someone

else's." 

"You feel you should go, don't you." 

Wagner hung his head. "I think I have to, Biz. To see for myself if

it's really as bad as they say. If it is, that Manhattan clan is going

to need help." His head swung round to the window, his eyes far away,

and snorted. "At least you'll get an accurate report." 

"What else?" Bismarck pressed. 

"Mauser's there," Wagner said quietly. "He phoned me the other night.

Asking for help." 

She raised an eye ridge. "I would never have taken Mauser for a

soldier." 

"Me neither." He shook his head. "I called him in Winslow in the fall.

Talked to Eddie for a while before Mauser got to the phone. She told me

she couldn't believe it herself, how eager he was to join up and do his

duty." 

"Perhaps Mauser has finally grown up." 

"War will do that to you," the blond gargoyle retorted grimly. "Maybe I

don't want my son learning some of the lessons combat teaches." 

"Go," Bismarck whispered softly. 

He looked at her quizzically. 

"All you ever need to do," she murmured, "is follow your own heart. You

will do right. I know it." 

He smiled, endlessly grateful for his mate's loving understanding, and

wrapped her in his arms and wings, kissing her deeply. 

January 2009

New York 

Patrol had taken on different qualities these days. 

Brooklyn looked at Angela on his right and Broadway on his left.

Broadway's normally genial face was set in an angry snarl-no doubt over

the laser weapons that seemed to be proliferating everywhere. Clones and

mutates carried them as standard issue, and human thugs were more than

happy to pick up any weapons they could gather from the bodies of

Sevarius' fallen troops. 

Not that there were enough fallen troops, Brooklyn thought grimly to

himself. Goliath had long given up hope of reclaiming Long Island and

was now working strictly on a policy of containment. The red gargoyle

thought back to the good old days when the worst he'd had to face was a

flight of Steel Clan robots or Demona's clone clan. He remembered how

frightened they'd all been, that day when they met their 'evil twins':

Malibu, Brentwood, Burbank, Hollywood. 

~What I wouldn't give if they were the only clones we had to worry

about.~ They'd proved good allies in the end. Sevarius' monkeys were

much less redeemable, and there were so many more of them. 

At least, Brooklyn hoped they were less redeemable. ~They were!~ he

raged inwardly. ~They had to be!~ 

Or how would he cope with the guilt of killing them? 

In that moment, the skies lit up with laser fire, and suddenly guilt

became the last thing on his mind. A large patrol of clones-at least

ten-was swooping down on them, shooting. 

Broadway rolled left. Angela swooped right. Brooklyn flapped his wings

to go overtop of the enemies. 

Something hit his right wing, burning like fire. Pain screamed into his

shoulder blade. He jerked his head backwards. 

Three mutates, also carrying weapons, diving from the opposite

direction. There was a ruined church steeple across the block-evidently

the cat-creatures had been holed up there, waiting for a target of

opportunity. Like Brooklyn. 

He tried to turn, but his wing flared with agony and refused to work.

He felt his body starting an involuntary roll as his good left wing

developed more lift than his injured right one. The red gargoyle

struggled to level himself out... 

...and a burst of electricity crackled across his body. His wings

folded, and he fell to earth. The shadows of the alley below enveloped

him. 

The mutates grinned their cat-smiles, diving after their prey. 

"Where's Brooklyn?" Angela yelled, jinking to avoid the clones' fire. 

"I thought he was with you!" Broadway called back. 

Angela shook her head. "I lost sight of him when the clones jumped us."

A laser burst singed the end of her ponytail. "We can't fight them

all!" she cried. 

"We can't leave Brooklyn either!" Broadway attempted to dodge into a

side street and evade the clones, but his stratagem was unsuccessful.

Angela was right. There were just too many. 

"Goliath says not to fight when we're outnumbered and outgunned," Angela

said breathlessly into his ear as she took formation beside him. 

"Brooklyn's smart. He won't go patrolling alone. He'll make his way

back to the Eyrie Building." 

Broadway sighed. "I guess you're right." 

More laser fire rained down on them with dismaying accuracy. The two

gargoyles rolled and looped, throwing off the clones' aim. 

"So how do we lose these bozos?" Broadway asked. 

"They won't follow us too far," Angela retorted. "Lex says their

patrols are limited to certain neighbourhoods and they don't go beyond

the boundaries of those areas. It's programmed into them." 

Broadway nodded. In his inner heart, he prayed his rookery brother was

all right. 

Brooklyn's senses returned before he hit the ground, giving him time to

stretch his wings and check his fall. He ignored the pain in his wounded

limb, forcing the wing to its full span. The red gargoyle plowed into a

pile of debris at the side of the alley. 

Shaking his aching limbs, he forced himself onto all fours and crawled

behind the heap of garbage that had softened his landing. 

At the mouth of the alley, the three mutates touched down. 

Brooklyn crouched behind the pile of debris, clutching his wounded wing

limb, trying to stop the bleeding as best he could. He could hear the

three mutates moving in the alley and wished he could quiet his

thundering heart. He bit his tongue hard, struggling to keep from

moaning. 

Noises. Coming closer. 

~Please don't let them have found me.~ 

A furry hand on the top of the garbage pile shattered his hopes. 

The mutate's head appeared. Brooklyn lashed out with his tail, slapping

the mutate across the face. It went falling backwards. The red gargoyle

staggered to his feet-no point in hiding now-as the other two mutates

charged around the pile, bearing down on him. He growled, raising his

intact wing, prepared to go down fighting. 

Thud. Softly, barely louder than a cough. One mutate's head jerked

back in a spray of blood. 

Thud again. The last one dropped its gun, hands rising to its chest as

it fell over and died. 

Brooklyn's head swung around, looking for his mysterious rescuer. 

The figure stood on top of a dumpster lid, black wings folded behind it.

A bronze coloured sniper rifle, decorated all over with odd burnished

swirls, was in its hands. Despite the wings, the stranger's body was

human. It wore knee-high black boots, black jump pants, a black leather

jacket and black T-shirt underneath, a grey glove on the right hand, and

a medal in the shape of a German cross around its neck. The

five-fingered wing hands were covered with silver gauntlets. It jumped

off the Dumpster, flaring its wings behind it and landed lightly right

beside Brooklyn.

"You all right?" The voice was tinged with a German accent.

Brooklyn nodded, staring at his rescuer, trying to figure out whether he

was looking at a mutated human, a humanlike gargoyle, or a hybrid. The

stranger seemed distracted and Brooklyn suddenly realized why-the first

mutate, the one that had found him, was still alive. He could hear it

scrambling to its feet on the other side of the garbage. 

In a blink, the bronze sniper rifle somehow...shifted...into a bronze

handgun. The stranger went down on his knees, waiting. As the mutate

leaped to the top of the heap, the newcomer fired a bullet right between

the mutate's eyes. Rising, Brooklyn's rescuer casually tucked the weapon

into the waistband of his pants, as a driver might pocket his keys after

locking his car. 

"What the hell..." Brooklyn said. 

"Richard S. Wagner, at your service," the newcomer said with a smirk.

"Get your gun and let's get out of here." 

Brooklyn stared at him. 

"I said hurry up and get your gun," the stranger repeated, shifting his

weight from one leg to the other, his eyes darting around the alley. "We

shouldn't be in one place too long." 

"I don't have a gun," Brooklyn managed. 

The head snapped around, blue eyes boring into his. "What kind of idiot

would come out in a place like this, alone and unarmed?" 

"I got separated from the others," the red gargoyle replied, trying to

justify himself, "and we don't carry guns." 

"Don't...Mein Gott. You all have a death wish." The eyes glanced from

Brooklyn's face to his wound and back to his face. "You're not gonna die

on me, are you?"

"No. It's..." He smirked,quoting the unofficial Resistance motto.

"It's only a flesh wound."

"Good. Cal would never forgive me if I let his son die on my watch."

"Cal?" Brooklyn repeated blankly, and then an idea made its way into his

head, an idea that caused his chest to clench and his eyes to narrow.

Granted, he had never heard his father referred to as "Cal" before,

but...

"You're Caligo's boy," the newcomer said.

Brooklyn immediately snapped back on the defensive. "Yeah? What if I

am?"

"I know you are." He smirked and gave the gargoyle a wink. "The

profile's a dead giveaway."

"What do you know about Caligo?" Brooklyn demanded suspiciously.

"Well, for one thing, he never shuts up about you."

Brooklyn's jaw dropped like a rock.

Wagner continued, "God, you should hear him. It's always Brooklyn this

and Brooklyn that." The humanlike gargoyle eyed him up. "I've heard so

much about you that I feel I know you already."

Despite Brooklyn's troubled relationship with his father, he couldn't

help but feel a little flattered by the German's words. "Well...um...you

I haven't heard about."

"Be glad." A smirk. "I'm the Master Assassin of the Iron Clan of

Bavaria." He drew the bronze handgun and bowed; as he did so, the gun

shimmered and re-formed itself into a four-foot sword with a curved edge.

That curve was broken by four long, back-curving serrations that gave

the blade a hungry look.

Brooklyn gestured questioningly at the sword.

"Assassin's Blade," Wagner said. "Much as I hate magic..." He winked,

and in doing so, Brooklyn noticed something that made him rather

uncomfortable-the centers of the newcomer's eyes were not black, but

dark burnished bronze, the same colour as the swirls carved in the

sword.

Wagner smirked and transformed the sword again...this time into a

full-scale missile truck with a launcher on the back. Brooklyn's eyes

goggled as he ran his hands over the vehicle. The tires felt like

rubber-the seat felt soft-but the entire vehicle, inside and out, was

bronze with those black swirling patterns.

The German was nonchalantly seating himself behind the wheel, grinning

at the gargoyle's astonishment. "Hop in."

Brooklyn took a look around the area and did so.

Wagner threw the truck into gear and adopted an obviously fake British

accent. "Where to, my good man?"

"What?" Brooklyn replied, shaking his head, still trying to get used to

the magical weapon Wagner had called the Assassin's Blade.

"You know this city better'n I do, so where's your base?"

Could this be a Sevarius plot?

Brooklyn gave partial directions, enough to get them halfway there, and

considered running a mind probe on his new comrade. It would be better

to learn here and now if the German was a traitor. The red gargoyle sent

out a tentative mind probe, just to make certain he wasn't giving away

the location of the base to one of Sevarius' men.

SLAM. It was like walking into the psychic equivalent of a brick

wall.

Could the humanlike gargoyle-or gargoyle-like human, or whatever he

was-be psi-blind? Brooklyn concentrated carefully and tried again, more

delicately this time, and Richard S. Wagner's mind loomed up like a

fortress. The structure shimmered and solidified. It was built of stone

and concrete, adorned with lasers, iron bars, and gun turrets, and

emblazoned with insignia that had been defaced and re-carved several

times. One carving looked as if it might once have been the Illuminati

eye-in-the-pyramid. Another sign had a haunting familiarity, though

Brooklyn could not say from where. It had originally depicted a hub of

eight arrows, each pointing in a different direction, but now only the

arrow pointing straight up remained sharp and clear-the other seven

appeared extremely weathered, or sandblasted, as if an attempt had been

made to obliterate them.

Brooklyn took hold of the outer door and opened it gently. This castle

was Wagner's inner mind, and any violent disruptions would give away

Brooklyn's presence. He doubted that the German would take well to such

an intrusion.

The inner sanctums of Wagner's mind were stone corridors, decorated with

draperies of red and black. The air was cool and slightly damp.

Brooklyn's head turned as he noticed a portrait on the wall, hanging in a

gold frame. The image was one he did not recognize-a khaki green male

gargoyle with long spiral horns-though the face bore a rather eerie

resemblance to Mauser.

Brooklyn paced the corridors. The place was designed very simply;

hallways joined the main corridor at regular intervals and branched off

at ninety degree angles. Rooms on both sides of the halls contained the

symbolic contents of Wagner's brain. Other portraits lined the walls-a

human in German uniform, a peach hatchling with a muzzle, a female

gargoyle whom Brooklyn recognized as the Chancellor of the Iron Clan of

Bavaria. There were no signs of Sevarius' foul tint here.

Slowly, surely, Brooklyn worked his way ever inward. Once he looked up

at a portrait with surprise as he recognized Mauser's face; another time

he frowned at Caligo's image done in oils. As he travelled, the

character of the place began changing. The light dimmed; the draperies

darkened to shades of black. The portraits became sinister; dark

gargoyles with Illuminati insignia, held in burnished frames. All of the

room doors were closed now, and access was barred not merely with locks,

as in the middle sanctums, but with lasers, touchpads and armoured

plating.

The red gargoyle thought carefully, trying to interpret the allegorical

images. Judging by the layout of the fortress, Wagner was efficient,

orderly, and practical, though he tended to be a private person and

suspicious of others. He obviously loved his family and friends

deeply...but he also had long-running grudges against enemies. People

who'd marked him; people he could not forgive.

In the center, Brooklyn found a staircase, leading down.

For a moment, he hesitated. Probing this deeply into the mind of an

individual who was currently driving a vehicle...a vehicle Brooklyn

himself was riding in...was probably unwise.

Though he'd come so far...perhaps he'd never get this close again...

Brooklyn descended. He stepped carefully, fighting a rising sense of

paranoia, as if Wagner himself would be walking these halls and might

possibly catch him.

It was almost pitch black in the...basement? No. Dungeon.

The corridors were distorted here, warped on wild angles. The rooms

more closely resembled bomb shelters than anything else. Brooklyn

doubted that his powers would be enough to force those doors open even if

he needed to. Briefly, he wondered if even Wagner himself could open

them without permanent damage.

The German had secrets. Ghosts hidden even from himself.

The walls crumbled here, were fireblackened there. They were the

psychic scars of a man who'd lived through several kinds of hells.

Brooklyn shuddered. In places the devastation was enormous, and yet,

there were remarkably few signs of insanity. Rather, the walls had been

shored up around the wreckage; in places, the debris had even become the

wall itself... After experiences that would drive many men mad, the

German had somehow succeeded not only in surviving but in thriving, in

taking what had been done to him and turning it into a part of his

defences.

And the corridor still led down.

Brooklyn still couldn't sense anything linking the German to Sevarius.

He was convinced that Wagner's allegiance to the Resistance was honest;

yet something drew him onward. A form of double-checking, perhaps...a

desire to know just what sort of individual he had become allied to.

A waft of air came through the ruined hallway, smelling of moisture

and...

Gasoline?

Brooklyn walked forward, into the darkness. The blackness was absolute

and he was forced to feel his way along the side of the wall. Abruptly

the corridor opened up. In the light of a single torch, Brooklyn's

cheeks went pale at what he saw before him.

In the catacombs beneath the fortress sat a vast pool of gasoline, black

and thick, waiting. Bubbles squeezed up slowly, spluttering as they

popped. Crude oil oozed around pillars that were made of...it looked

like plastique...high explosive...

The whole structure was built on a massive underground bomb, and it

needed only one spark to explode.

Brooklyn withdrew rapidly. He realized his retreat should be as

cautious as his entry, but he didn't care. If the German were to realize

that his mind was being probed...an individual as paranoid and guarded as

he was...well, that just might be enough to spark off that great

subterranean pool in the bottom of Wagner's mind.

The red gargoyle came back to himself, blinking his eyes rapidly as he

awoke in the shotgun seat of the Jeep. Wagner was looking over at him

with a little smirk on his lips.

"How the hell can you doze off in a place like this?" the German

asked.

~How the hell can you live day-to-day with that buried rage, that

capacity for destruction?~ Brooklyn thought, but did not ask.


End file.
